


Aquila

by SilverShortyyy



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 12:18:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14811237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverShortyyy/pseuds/SilverShortyyy
Summary: Carol had never found herself looking at Harge at night, nothing but moonlight streaming through the windows, and feeling as if she had only then fallen in love with him.But Therese looks absolutely perfect in the moonlight. And Carol finds herself falling deeper and deeper down that ravine they all call love, but she notices how she feels like she’s being taken into a voyage into outer space instead.Carol remembers thinking love was like looking into an endless fall. Yet now she sees nothing but endless galaxies and stars.





	Aquila

**Author's Note:**

> To all those who have already read this before my edit: I edited it! Thanks to a kind reader, I now have taken note of a very important detail I seem to have missed when I read the book. But anyway! I hope you all enjoy it either way! Much love xx

Soft, cream eyelids. Soft, with the slightest gleam of moonlight shining over it, casting a subtle glow on the gently closed eyes.

Soft, cream-colored eyelids, kissed by moonlight and tempting her to kiss it too.

How’d she get this lucky? Carol sighs into Therese, and pulls her closer, Carol’s fingers drawing lazy circles on the small of Therese’s back. What a million lives could have never let her know, what a million universes could have never warned her about; did she need a warning? Or any foreword of what was to stand in front of her from the other side of the counter in a toy store? Carol smiles, and she can’t help the deepness in the beating of her heart, as if digging deep into all the hidden corners and crevices in her mind, scooping it all out and laying it out in the open.

She breathes in deeply. Her own perfume from Harge may linger in the air between them, but Carol smells Therese a lot more distinctly. That scent of soft lilac in Therese’s hair, those soft strands that Carol finds she wants to bury herself in, inhale deeply with her eyes closed, and God knows it would make her heart beat faster, because Therese always made her heart beat faster, for no other reason than because Therese is here and Therese is now.

But Carol keeps herself a hair’s breadth away from Therese’s face, their bodies pressed flush together beneath the covers.

Thank God for relatively cool summer days.

Carol shifts, lifting her other arm out from under her and letting it fall onto their pillow, the distance between their faces almost letting nothing—not even a shadow—come between them.

Carol feels rather than sees Therese smile. Or maybe, Carol thinks, Therese’s smile just reaches her eyes so much that not even eyelids could keep that smile from staying hidden, especially beneath the moonlight.

Therese bites her lip, and Carol only barely keeps herself from kissing that smile onto her own lips.

Then again, who is she to claim that smile had not already replicated itself onto her face?

“Aren’t you the one who usually falls asleep before me?”

“Well, tonight’s different, darling,” Carol says. Her fingers curl around Therese skin, pulling her even closer. _Mine. Mine. Mine._ “I just so happen to want to enjoy the view a little more.”

Therese chuckles. Then, slowly, her soft, cream-colored, moonlight-kissed eyelids lift up, revealing the deepest, most entrancing pools of hazel Carol had ever seen, and God damn her if she could ever actually find another with eyes that hypnotizing.

Therese’s eyes smile despite the sleepiness that falls over her.

Carol finds it endearing; oh so terribly endearing.

“Hm? Is that so?” A mischievous glint in hazel eyes. Carol begins to nod just as Therese pulls and lies on her back, so that Carol ends up on top of her, and Therese giggles underneath. “How do you like it now?” Therese giggles. And Carol would play along, ‘torture’ her love to laughter, but tonight is different.

It just is.

“I.” Carol kisses Therese’s collarbone, stark against the moonlight streaming through muslin curtains, fading into the shadow that falls about her. “Couldn’t.” Carol kisses the valley between Therese’s breasts, and Carol thinks she could bury herself between them, ear pressed against Therese’s chest, and falling asleep to Therese’ heartbeat, knowing it’ll be there when she wakes up, and the day after that, and the day after that. “Have.” Carol kisses Therese’s stomach, smooth and soft and so perfect. Carol lets her fingers trace the lines sneaking their way up Therese’s stomach, and she kisses those too, runs her lips over them. “Asked.” Carol kisses Therese’s just below the breast, letting her lips mold onto the soft flesh there, almost nipping at it but not quite. “For.” Carol moves over to the other breast, kissing the plane of skin somewhere above it, just short of the shoulders but not quite far from the chest. “More.” It comes out with a husk, and Therese’s giggles had become gasps now, sharp inhales accompanied by nails digging into Carol’s back.

Carol hovers over Therese, and Carol doesn’t have to think about the way her face is reflected back to her by Therese’s own, the way Therese’s eyes look up at her, in wonder and surprise and _you’re mine?_ because how, how the hell did they find each other when the whole world had been right there for them to look through and choose from? Carol smiles, and her heartbeat slows, just enough for her to want to cry.

Is this happiness? Is this contentedness? God help her if she dared call it bliss; there is no ignorance in admitting to one’s true self.

Carol brings a hand to Therese’s cheek, and Therese’s palm meets it there, covers it, and Carol has no doubt that the smile on Therese’s lips is the exact same smile on Carol’s own.

Carol brings herself down, and Therese’s lips are so soft, so warm, like a bright summer day, a day where they could go out into the world and walk hand in hand, and kiss beneath a tree glistening with morning dew while the wind blew past. Carol leans in, and so does Therese, and Therese’s lips feels like a spring day, thawing through the cold and bursting forth warmth, drowning the world once varnished in ice with the kiss of a million small suns and the flowers’ bloom. Carol lets herself fall onto Therese, her other hand finding Therese’s other cheek, and Therese is winter and fall, the cold bite that makes cheeks flush ever so deeply (Carol remembers Therese blushing, way back when, and now she smiles into their kiss, warranting a small bite from Therese as if to say ‘ _what are you smiling about_ ’), and the crisp warmth and fallen leaves that are so Therese, so Therese because of their likeness to the brown in those hazel eyes, to a brown like dusk but not quite, like coffee but not quite; like the calmest, smoothest maelstrom with all the hues of lightest red and softest brown and glinting gold and hiding orange waiting deep beneath the unbreakable ocean surface of the faintest, most vibrant glints of green.

When their lips part, Carol lets an arm fall beside Therese’s head to keep herself up. She finds herself falling into those deep hazel pools, willing herself to drown knowing that she’ll know how to breath while underwater.

“My angel,” she whispers, and Therese looks like she might just cry. _Darling, don’t cry._ Carol thinks. _I’m the one who should be thanking you._ “Flung out of space.”

Therese pulls herself up for one more kiss, and Carol melts into it. _How lucky was I to have met you._ She lets Therese roll them over, after which Carol finds herself lying back down on the bed, eyes trained on the night sky past the muslin curtains. Therese rests her head against Carol’s shoulder, no doubt listening to the heartbeat beneath the ivory skin.

Carol lets her fingers wander into Therese’s hair, tangling into dark brown strands kissed by the moonlight.

How lucky she must be to have someone bring her a piece of heaven, how lucky that despite not knowing how to fly in that exact same way, she was given someone who could fly her to the moon, to the stars, and whatever lay beyond. How lucky that she could hear this song over and over again, _their_ song, no lie nor faux faces marring their romance, nothing but the sheer desire— _magnetism_ —pulling them toward each other as if no other could do.

Carol knows Therese’s eyes are on her, but doesn’t mind. Instead, she finds herself falling asleep to the rhythm of Therese’s breathing.

Carol’s last thought before falling asleep is of the _Summer Triangle_ Therese had told her about some time ago, of a trio of stars in the night sky. Those stars, Therese had told her, are part of three different constellations.

The star _Vega_ belongs to the constellation _Lyra_. The star _Deneb_ belongs to the constellation _Cygnus_. And the star _Altair_ belongs to the constellation _Aquila_.

The Lyre, The Swan, and the Eagle.

 _My angel,_ Carol thinks, just as the smallest tendrils of dreams begin to find its way to her, _my eagle soaring high in the heavens._

Oh such grace the swan had, and how high the eagle flew. And yet they found each other, and sang their own, perfect song.


End file.
